A six-vehicle pile-up Tuesday on Interstate 75 just south of Cloud Springs Road took nearly six hours to clean up, but involved only minor injuries, officials said.

The pileup, which occurred about 8 a.m., involved two tractor-trailers and four passenger vehicles, according to Capt. Clyde Ingle of Catoosa County Fire & Rescue.

Georgia State Patrol officials said one motorist was transported to Hutcheson Medical Center and another was taken to Erlanger Medical Center. Other injured motorists were treated at the scene and released.

Ingle said the accident happened when a motorist in a pickup lost a piece of carpet they were transporting, which caused a chain reaction wreck.

“Tractor-trailers and cars started swerving to avoid it,” he said.

A tractor-trailer containing laundry detergent overturned, spilling detergent onto the interstate, and a second tractor-trailer rear-ended a Mercury Grand Marquis, Ingle said. Two motorists were extracted from their vehicles, including Alesha Ringer, a passenger in a Honda Accord that was pinned in by the railing along the interstate.

Ingle said a hazardous materials team was dispatched to clean up the detergent.

Catoosa County Sheriff Phil Summers said local law enforcement has noticed a high number of traffic accidents along that stretch of the interstate. A dip in the pavement on the bridge that crosses Three Notch Road near the Cloud Springs Road exit may share part of the blame for the frequency of accidents, Summers said.

“We have a problem in that area,” he said. “At the bridge, there is a pavement change and especially during rainy conditions, vehicles hit that dip and lose control.”

Summers said the state Department of Transportation is currently investigating the problem. Last week’s wreck was not caused by the dip in the pavement, he said.

In May, a four-year-old boy died in a one-vehicle accident one mile south of the collision site, when a northbound tractor-trailer driven by his mother careened off a steep embankment during rainy weather.

Capt. Ingle said the Cloud Springs area of I-75 is just as accident-prone as any other stretch of interstate his department covers. Where there are high speeds, there are bound to be wrecks, he said.

“Motorists burn up I-75 everyday,” Ingle said. “Accidents are everywhere along the interstate to us. It’s nothing but a racetrack out there from daylight to dark.”

Georgia State Patrol operator Brian Dedmon agrees, noting accidents are consistently spread out across the North Georgia section of I-75.

“We don’t see any more accidents south of Cloud Springs Road than we see north or south of Ga. 151, exit 336 in Dalton, or any other spot on the interstate route,” he said.

The cause of the accident is still under investigation by GSP Trooper Anthony McDaniel, Dedmon said